Enable Accessibility Options Anywhere In Mountain Lion [OS X Tips]

Built into every Mac are a host of accessibility options. People with visual disabilities may need to zoom into the screen, making everything on it bigger in order to see enough to use the Mac. Individuals who experience blindness can use VoiceOver, which has the Mac speak everything on screen, including menus and dialog buttons. Other people with visual impairments may need to invert the Display colors and adjust the contrast to help them with eye fatigue as well as seeing the items on screen.

Folks with motor difficulties may need Sticky Keys, which allows them to activate keyboard shortcuts that typically require more than one key held at a time, with sequential key presses instead of simultaneous ones. Slow Keys helps with motor challenges like repeated key presses, while Mouse Keys lets users control the mouse cursor with the numeric keypad.

It used to be that you’d need to launch System Preferences, click on the Accessibility preference pane icon, and enable or disable the options. If you were helping an individual with a disability learn the Mac or any programs on the Mac, you’d have to do this over and over.

Now, in Mountain Lion, all you need to do is hit Command-Option-F5, and you can enable or disable the accessibility options you see in the screenshot above. This makes things super easy to manage, without a lot of fuss and bother. You can even click on the Preferences… button to launch the full Accessibility pane to have more control over individual options.

Are you using OS X Mountain Lion? Got a tip you want to share with us? Drop me a line or leave a comment below.